Scorpions tame Wildcats, stay alive in RRAC tourney

The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College was on the brink of having its season end against Wiley Col-lege.

Yet, the Scorpions prevailed with a late-inning offensive surge while completing one of its best defensive plays of the year to pre-serve its 2008 campaign for at least one more day.

UTB-TSC scored the go-ahead three-run sixth inning while centerfielder Robby Mang caught and threw the final out in one-fell swoop in the seventh frame to win 7-2 over the Wildcats in the Red River Athletic Tournament at Scorpion Field on Wednesday afternoon.

"We're still playing," Scorpion coach Joel Barta said. "The way we go about it is as long no one's told you your season is over that's a good thing. We're swinging a little bit better having those 10 days off you could see it (Tuesday), hopefully we continue to prog-ress."

Starting pitcher Tony Lerma gave the Scorpions their second straight quality outing giving up two runs (one earned) on nine hits in seven innings of work.

Jesse Galvan relieved Lerma to start the eighth and had the Wiley batters clueless at the plate strikeing out five of the six batters he face in two innings of work to keep the Scorpions season alive.

"That was huge," Barta said. "He needed something on the line for him to throw well, some guys throw well with pressure and dial up. (Galvan) really responded and gave us a huge outing completely stopping them with six straight outs."

The Wildcats contained a 2-1 holding the UTB-TSC bats in check scattering only one unearned run while scattering five hits through five innings.

In the bottom half of the sixth the Scorpions broke through unleashing an offensive flurry taking advantage of two WC errors scoring a trio of runs on three hits for a 4-2 advantage.

The ensuing inning Lerma found himself in a bases-loaded jam with one against the team's leading homerun hitter in Jonathan Valle (.409 season batting average, three homers).

Lerma induced a flyout on Valle to center that should have easily brought home WC's Alexis Torres but Mang's laser to the plate gunned out Torres for the double play.

"If we have anybody else that throws that baseball he's safe," Barta said. "Everyone knows on our team that (Mang has) the strongest arm. It was at an awkward position and he threw a strike. If that ball is anywhere else it's a different inning."

UTB-TSC tacked on three more insurance runs to seal the victory including Ryan Macdonald's two-run triple that hit the chalk in shallow right in the eighth inning for a 6-2 lead.

With Texas Wesleyan's 5-2 victory over Huston-Tillotson University last night the Scorpions will face Bacone College at 10 a.m. in an elimination game.

If the Scorpions win they will battle the loser of the Rams and Northwood game at 2 p.m. for a chance at the RRAC title Friday.